• Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Descent
  • Subscribe
  • My Free Time
  • March 2010
    M T W T F S S
    « Dec    
    1234567
    891011121314
    15161718192021
    22232425262728
    293031  
  • Links

    • Comics Archive
    • News Archive
    • Reviews Archive


  • Vote For The Gelatinous Cube



    The Webcomic List
  • Tags

    alien shooter ArmA II batman batman arkham asylum boardgame borderlands burger time call of duty Christmas classic co-op collection cryostasis csi defense grid descent fallout fallout 3 gears of war 2 gencon genesis geometry wars guitar hero world tour hale killbot larva mortus left 4 dead Mirror's Edge mortal kombat old school PAX PC Plants VS. Zombies review Reviews rock band sonic steam tower defense ultimate vengeance wacom xbla youtube zombie shooter

Posts Tagged ‘gencon’

Gencon starts tomorrow

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Thursday through Sunday is Gencon, a huge gaming convention. I’ve been pretty into boardgames lately, and since it’s only a state away, I’m going. I’ll only be there Friday and Saturday, but I think I should get to do plenty of things in that time. I really just want to see what it’s like. I don’t expect it to be as cool as PAX, but I just couldn’t justify spending the money to go to Seattle this year. I do hope to go back soon though.

  • Share/Bookmark
Tags: gencon | Comment )

Descent: Sea of Blood Expansion Details

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

I got back from Gencon today. It was a great time but I don’t know how people can do 4 days of that. I had the good pleasure to meet Kevin Wilson, the designer of Descent: Journeys in the Dark, and he told me about the upcoming campaign expansion, Sea of Blood. It’s essentially Road to Legend 2, but this time a significant portion of gameplay takes place on the open water. The heroes control a ship, and can upgrade it with cannons and other options. They hop from island to island, exploring dungeons as they go. Meanwhile, the overlord has 4 new avatars, and new plots (I don’t know how many).

There are no new miniatures, unfortunately. There are cardboard counters representing lieutenants, as with Road to Legend. There are also sharks, and if I have anything to say about it, those sharks will have beastmen riding them. :) I also saw that the dungeon deck contained 45 dungeons. UPDATE: According to the comments (and I have good reasons for trusting them), there are not necessarily 45 dungeons. It seems that the numbers continue where Road to Legend left off. Does this mean that this campaign does in fact interface with Road to Legend? I know that would make a lot of people very happy!

Here are the pictures I took of the prototype that they had on display. I believe this was a proof copy or something. I could not get a great shot of the back of the box, but I could see enough to verify the lack of miniatures. I know that is disappointing to a lot of people, myself included.

I also picked up the Descent Quest Compendium volume 1, which Kevin Wilson was kind enough to sign for me. I have yet to read through any quests, but they all seem unique in their own way, bringing many new mechanics into play. Many of them also seem quite long. If you are wondering how much use each expansion gets….I’ll tell you. There are 16 quests, but a couple involve multiple expansions. Here I’m listing them out on a per expansion basis, so the total here will exceed 16. UPDATE: Apparently the editing on the Compendium wasn’t overly strict; some of the quests don’t seem to require the expansions listed, so take these numbers with a grain of salt. I haven’t verified any specific claims. We just played the first quest last night, and the heroes got creamed. I expect the difficulty to be cranked pretty high on these quests.

  • Base game only: 7 quests
  • Tomb of Ice:  4 quests
  • Well of Darkness: 4 quests
  • Altar of Despair: 3 quests
  • Road to Legend: 2 quests

To let you know about quests with multiple expansions in use:

  • Well of Darkness + Altar of Despair: 1 quest
  • All of them: 1 quest
    Sea of Blood banner

    Sea of Blood banner

    Here’s a large banner they had set up near their play area.

    Sea of Blood Overland map

    Sea of Blood Overland map

    Here you can see the overland map used in Sea of Blood, including its many islands. Kevin tells me this is from Runebound but I’ve not played that game. You can also see the overlord’s avatars.

    Sea of Blood components

    Sea of Blood components

    Here are the contents of the Sea of Blood expansion, including cards and part of the ship. Next to the ship you can see cannon tokens. Standing behind them are tuck boxes for the campaign.

    Sea of Blood Box cover

    Sea of Blood Box cover

    The expansion was behind glass, so I apologize for the flash. Next to the box you can see the campaign guide. It looks just like the Road to Legend guide. Folded up you can also see the ocean map. On the other side of it is a large island map. I did not get to see that.

    Sea of Blood back of box

    Sea of Blood back of box

    Again, sorry for the flash. This was the best I could do on the back of the box, but I could verify that there are no miniatures.

    Descent Quest Compendium Volume 1

    Descent Quest Compendium Volume 1

    Here’s the quest compendium, sitting on Tomb of Ice for scale reference.

    Quest Compendium Autograph

    Quest Compendium Autograph

    The photo is blurry, but this is Kevin Wilson’s autograph on the inside cover. He wrote “Have fun storming the castle!” Thanks Kevin!

  • Share/Bookmark
Tags: campaign, descent, gencon, kevin wilson, quest compendium, road to legend, sea of blood | 4 Comments ^

The Gelatinous Cube, © 2008 Mark Thomas. Site powered by WordPress with ComicPress. Subscribe RSS: Entries | Comments